Emmanuel Dispo, M.A. is our lecturer on this Module. I got the material from him through e-mail. I read through it before having the classes. I would like to make a summarization of all the content of this subject as following;
1.What is phenomenology?
In etymology: The word "Phenomenology" comes from the Greek words phainómenon, meaning "that which appears," and lógos, meaning "study." There fore we can give a rare meaning of “phenomenology” as the study of things that which appear. In Husserl's explanation, phenomenology is primarily concerned with making the structures of consciousness, and the phenomena which appear and can be perceived in human consciousness.
2.What is phenomenology as a method?
It is an outline of structure that should be taken in order to reach the pure phenomenon.
3.What is phenomenology as a philosophy?
It is an essential knowledge of “that which is”. Husserl called this is as a way to reach the essence of its object as it is necessary.
4.What is the difference between the Cartesian doubt [deduction] and the Husserlian doubt [meditation]?
For Descartes, “Cogito ergo sum” He ended up his statement by proving only the subject. But Husserlian doubt leaded us to meditate at the object itself (Cogitatum) which he called “intentional of consciousness” The difference between these two basics is the goal of our consciousness.
5.What does it mean: “to things themselves”?
It is like the destination of Husserl’s meditation. It considered in the thing itself which later will come out the so called “essence”
6.What does Husserl mean when he described phenomenology as the “science of essences”?
We can explain his idea into two things 1.It is a science that guide us to consider at the object (reality) not only the subject. 2.By doing so, it comes the factual realization of each essence According to Husserl, in order to reach the essence of each being we have to come into the phenomenolygy.
7.What are the basic phenomenological techniques?
There are 4 basic techniques which are; 7.1.epoché 7.2.reduction 7.3.ideation 7.4.intuition
8.What is epoché? What is reduction?
What are the levels of reduction? The epoché is a very basic way by working as a negative but not retract. It will eliminate all the unessential elements until the necessary one left. Reduction is served as a positive way of this technique. There are 6 levels of reduction but we can explain it only 3 which are 1.psychological reduction 2.eidetic reduction3.the rest of other 3 are combined as phenomenological reduction.
I had an oral examination with Emmanuel and also other 2 reports. They are the book review on Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice-Marleau Ponty and God without Being by Jean-Luc Marion. The value of this module has brought me to realize the transcendece in my everyday-experiences. How can I trancend all the appearances of everything to the spiritual dimension? This kind of solution helps me to go down deep in my faith and trust in God trough every situation in my life.
Here I would like to post those book reviews .
Phenomenology of God by Maurice-Marleau Ponty, trans. Collin Smith
The first phenomenon to me about phenomenology was appearing when I was asked to read such a tremendous and demanding work as that of Maurice Marleau-Ponty (1908-1961), a contemporary French philosopher, who himself and his works have influenced many philosophers nowadays. I found it really hard to control myself sitting and reading this tremendous work. I realize that nothingness appeared into my being but I have to express something about it with nothingness itself in my consciousness.
Marleau-Ponty’s Phénoménologie de la perception was published in 1945 and thanks to Collin Smith who translated it into English in 1962. But for me, even if it is in English it is still too difficult to understand. Someone has suggested that we need to read it at least twice, but I did it only once and that caused a lot of trouble in my head. In order to read this kind of book, we basically need the fundamental understanding about the general idea of phenomenology, and some ideas of its terminologies, for example, experience, sensation, perception, consciousness etc. and also an idea of some of the psychological terms.
We can roughly separate Marleau-Ponty’s work into four parts according to its contents which begins with an introduction. There are also other four units in this introduction. They all are about the field of phenomenology in which he used “Perception” as a special field for this investigation. It is concerned with perception as a mode of making judgments.
Psychologists have taken great responsibility to overlook these phenomena for a long time, and especially in human behavior in the field of relationship between sensation and perception. For the psychologist, sensation is the input about the physical world that is produced by our sensory receptors. Perception is the process by which the mind selects, organizes, and interprets sensations. Our eyes see, our ears hear, our hands touch etc. These processes operate naturally.
Marleau-Ponty has brought us to realize in his investigation of human consciousness that this consciousness is the awareness of something, and all this happens only in human experience, and of course only in the world. He suggested that in order to redefine our own experience, we need to go back to the experiences themselves which he himself called “a product of thought”.
Marleau-Ponty abandoned the idea of both empiricists and intellectualists, because they already had fixed concepts of the permanent possibilities of sensations. They already have made what he called “traditional prejudices”. For him, these kinds of theories have already prevented our investigation of consciousness itself. The idea of empiricism and intellectualism cannot help us to see that we need to know what we are looking for.
In part one, He has shown us the idea of body-subject as triumphing over dualism. Body is considered as a thing among things and will be found between other material objects, while spirit is considered as the power to obtain all knowledge, freedom and openness to others which Marleau-Ponty called “existence”. His idea about the human body as being itself a subject, in dialogue with the world, is one reality, which is at the same time both material and spiritual.
He is concerned with perception as the mode of existence of the body-subject at a preconscious level. The dialogue between the body, as subject, and its world at a level which is presupposed by consciousness, is operating as a movement in the human body.
According to Marleau-Ponty, the truth of the phenomenal body is not the objective body but the body as we live it. We can call it as a subject itself which his own consciousness is working out through something. The mode of existence of the body-subject at a preconscious level has guided us to the distinction between abstract and concrete movement. The background of concrete movement is the world as it is given and the background of abstract movement is just built up.
There must be an Eros or Libido which breathes life into an original world, and which gives sexual meaning to external stimuli, and outlines for each subject the use he shall make of his objective body. It is the very structure of perception or erotic experience which has undergone change; body is not perceived as an object but as a subject. Perception depends on consciousness of the erotic structure. If there is no consciousness, there is no satisfaction, intention nor even initiative of a sexual behavior in a cycle movement. For erotic perception, is not a cogitato which aims at a cogitatum, but it aims at another body, and of course it takes place in the world, not in a consciousness state.
There is an erotic “comprehension” while desire comprehends blindly the linking of body to body. In this case of sexuality, we are concerned with an intentionality which follows the general flow of existence and its movement. Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis, sexual feeling is not only the genitals. According to Freud, libido is an activity naturally directed toward definite ends. It is libido that causes awareness of sexual behavior in space and time.
Marleau-Ponty uses the term “leben” (living) in order to explain about the primary process that initiate the possibility to “erlebe” (live) in the world. Before reaching at the relationship of human beings, our human body has done something before perceiving and awakening it to relational living. The theory of psycho-analysis also shows us about the possibility of that one can loose a memory. It has been rejected by the body or consciousness. So, forgetfulness is an act that does not set before us an object. Perhaps losing memory may cause lost of communication both with the subject-body and others.
The role of the body as a sexual being is to ensure metamorphosis. Marleau-Ponty explained that the body transforms ideas into things. On the other hand, the body can also symbolize existence as its actuality. Memory which has a possibility to be lost also has a possibility to be recovered. In this sense, he really means that the human body needs to “open” itself for others. By doing so, the process of perception operates itself realizing its existence, and the existence of others and the world.
The simultaneous explanation of the body is expression and speech. Marleau-Ponty begins with his explanation of the functions of words. Its meaning is considered to be given with the states of consciousness. Sometimes words can not be given any meaning or shown in any connection with others, which he called “Anarthria”
Language is an external accompaniment of thought. The understanding of the words can be both meaningful and beyond its meaning. To realize thought in speech, Marleau-Ponty urges us to turn back to the phenomenon of speech.
We cannot consider a question, which is made up of thought and speech, then, we can find the external relation, between them. The thought in speaking subject is not a representation, not even an expressed object but it is the thought itself.
The meaning of the word is not contained in the world as a sound. Speech functions both as an operation of intelligence and a motor phenomenon. What Marleau-Ponty brought us to investigate with him in his word is to observe motility and intelligence. The former is the one in which the significant intention is at the stage of coming into being, and the latter serves as available significances.
The act of expressing establishes a linguistic world and a cultural world. It opens the transparency of an object without any secret, and of a subject as what it is thinking, and what it thinks it is. The experience of our own body reveals to us a mode of existing. The body is not an object, and the awareness of the body is not a thought. It is the unity of both sexuality and freedom that is rooted in the nature of the human body. The only way of knowing the body is by living it. By living your own body you also are losing yourself in it, and at the same time you are having an experience of the body running to encounter the awareness of this process.
After elucidating about the theory of the body in Part One, Marleau-Ponty brings us in part two to realize the theory of perception as we see the world. He begins by revising the idea of human the body as a being-in-the-world. Both internal and external perceptions are parts of the human body. So, what we need to do is to reawaken our experience of the world as it appears to us. Because we are a being-in-the-world, we perceive the world with our body as it is also the subject of perception.
Experience of sensation in the human body can be searched through inductive psychology by which Marleau-Ponty made his investigation. We use our own parts of our organs in order to receive the sensory data, and put them into perception. Literally, sensation can be a form of communion of things and perceptions.
An example is of a sheet of white paper given in this context when Marleau-Ponty says about space. The Act of perception appears to itself to be picked out from some all-embracing adherence to the world. Perception reveals an object as a light that illuminates something in the night. It is in the experience of the thing that the reflective idea of thought shall have its basis.
It follows that the phenomenon of apparent size and the phenomenon of distances are two features of a comprehensive organization of the field. Gestalt psychology has indeed contributed to showing that the apparent size of things in treating an object does not vary proportionately to the image. There is some space between the object and the perception of the subject, one who perceives. This is what Marleau-Ponty called “perception of space”, so that the truth of perception can be read off only from perception itself. We can realize things as things because they are given to us through our sensible functions. It is an experience of a thing that is given to us but not of the thing itself.
The natural world is the schema of inter-sensory relations. In order to reach the truth of the world itself as it is, we must refuse to perceptual consciousness the full possession of itself. Being human is like being thrown into the world. This is the idea of existentialism. It is only in the world that the human being can have its own consciousness, and realize its meaning: I live in the world together with others.
In the last part, he brought us to the Cartesian idea of cogito, which is the theme of his reflection. He refuses Descartes’ idea that the existence of a visible thing is doubtful, but for Marleau-Ponty it is only in the vision. Because when we carefully consider with a mere thought of seeing, it apparently appears not in doubt but in reality. Consciousness has transcended through and through, this is what he called it “active consciousness”. When we describe consciousness as involved through the body in space, through its language in a history, through its prejudices in a concrete form of thought, it is not just a matter of setting it back in a series of objective events.
The psychologists try to explain consciousness of the past in terms of memories so dose Marleau-Ponty. He talks about the consciousness of time in the past, as it will exist only in terms of memories, and consciousness of the future in terms of projection of these memories ahead of us. According to him, either past or future will exist only when a subjectivity is there as a being in itself. Subjectivity is not in time because it takes up or lives time. We are present to ourselves because we are present to the world. Consciousness takes root in being and time by taking up a situation.
The last concept, in the third part, is about freedom. Here Marleau-Ponty expresses his idea about freedom. He maintains that we have a part which is free, and a part which is determined. A human being has its own freedom from birth “of the world and into the world”. Being, for him, is the invisible dimension of the visible. It is the ultimate reality. In his conclusion, we might say that freedom for him is always within a given field of possibility. It is always present in a situation and is a mode of being-in-the-world which enables us to transcend ourselves.
What do I gain after reading this marvelous book? First of all, I have spent lots of time and energy to let the phenomenology of perception become part of my consciousness. I have to realize that I can transcend myself through the consciousness of my perception in the world. The only thing I could find out is the consciousness of God. The more I am thinking about myself as a human being the more I realize my limited conditions. There must be something or someone who he himself is unlimited and unconditioned, in order to set the conditions in the world. Someone that I am searching for is God or an “Absolute Being”, as a philosophical term. This transcendence helps me to have a clear cut idea and gives meaning to my being and its destination.
The simultaneous idea about energy comes to my mind when I understand the meaning and destination of my own self as a human being. This energy automatically runs itself into my spiritual dimension, and this powerful energy moves me to develop all my possibilities into actuality.
Freedom is also an important issue that many people nowadays look for without understanding its real meaning. Together with Marleau-Ponty, I absolutely disagree with J.P.Sartre’s definition of freedom in human being as an absolute. As a person who is studying philosophy, I have a role to give a genuine meaning of freedom which must go along with responsibility.
Lastly, I notice that I am improving the skill of reading and writing in English after reading such a long and awkward book, like phenomenology of perception, by Marleau-Ponty. Without this arduous work I would never have gained such valuable experience.
Book review; God Without Being by Jean-Luc Marion, trans. Thomas A. Carlson
Jean-Luc Marion has brought me to a metaphysical point of view in explaining the Being of God. I am grateful to have a great chance reading such a wonderful book of this continental catholic theologian. On the other hand, I might have said that in Chapter 3, it seems to me as a biblical reflection of the Being of God in Ontotheological perspective.
In its title, The Crossing of Being in Chapter 3, Marion begins with a limited capability of human being in speech. We are reducing the Being of God in our human language. But the philosophers have tried to find out the way to explain something about God. What do I find it relationship to the phenomenology is the negative way of approving. By saying “no” to something we are also saying “yes” to something. This is what E.Husserl called “epoch” in his phenomenological technique.
However Marion confirms that it is necessary to speak of God with Being in theological point of view. He then brings us to envisage the name of God as we can find His revelation through the scripture. This is what Marion called the Openness of Being.
In Exodus 3:14, we have the Hebrew term as God said to Moses “hy<+h.a,( rv<åa] hy<ßh.a, (´ehyè ´ášer ´ehyè)”, which has its translation into Greek in LXX as “evgw, eivmi o` w;n ( egō eimi ho ōn)”, then in Vulgate we have the term “ego sum qui sum” which means “I am who I am”
This is the Being of God as God himself revealed to us. It says absolutely nothing and at the same moment it says absolutely everything. Apparently this seems to be nothing we can know about God. But if there is a presupposition that it is about being, we have to come to its conclusion that God is an Absolute Being. Therefore other beings can have their own existences. The pre-existence of God causes other existences this is what has been explained in St.Thomas’ Quinquae viae. This concludes that God as Being in itself (ipsum esse)
In the revelation of God to Moses, we also find the characteristic of God which is the absolute goodness in itself (ipsum bonum). St.Thomas postulates that “the goodness of God is not something added to his substance, but his very substance is his goodness”. The goodness of God has already confirmed in 1 John 4:18 “o` qeo.j avga,ph evsti,n (God is love)”
By realization of the Being of God, we also understand our own being as St.Paul said in Acts 17:18 “for In him we live and move and have our being”. This is because God has given to us as a gift. It is an unending gift of love that we have to share with other, and our presence to other also is a gift to each one.
Marion’s idea about ‘Love’ when he said that “Love is not spoken, in the end, it is made” has reminded me of one of my favorite French contemporary philosopher, Emanuel Levinas. His concept about relationship between persons link to God as we see the ‘face’ of other that lead us to realize the face of God.
The face of the other in this sense looms above the other person and traces “where God passes”. God here refers to the God of which one cannot refuse belief in the history of salvation. That is the God who appears in traditional belief and of scripture and not some conceptual God of philosophy or
ontotheology. Then in the silence let us once again be somehow like Marion called “messengers announcing the divine silence”.
I found that this, God Without Being of Marion compare with Marleau-Ponty, is easy to understand and more interesting. It also helps me to go down deep in a silent moment of life and touch the absolute Truth and Goodness of God, no matter that with or without Being.
